A hundred years ago this month, the August 1915 issue of Electrical Experimenter magazine
shows the giant radio tower at Sayville, Long Island, superimposed over a scene of the war raging in Europe. As discussed in earlier posts, the station was owned by Germany’s Telefunken System, which had been placed under German government control, and communicated with the counterpart station in Nauen, Germany. In August 1914, none other than Hiram Percy Maxim advised the U.S. Government that the station had been transmitting coded messages in violation of U.S. neutrality. The German-controlled stations in the U.S. had been subsequently placed under the watchful eye of the U.S. Government.

The accompanying editorial by Hugo Gernsback notes the ease with which the Germans could use the station to send coded messages to ships and U-boats at sea, under the guise of innocuous business correspondence.

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